F. Scott Fitzgerald

1
F. Scott Fitzgerald
2
Americas Coming of Age

• Mechanization reduced demand for farm jobs
• Industrialization led to urbanization
• Business flourished (Big Boom)
• Middle class increased
• Automobile transformed society

3
An era of economic gain

• Between 1922 and 1929 dividends from stocks rose
  108
• Corporate profits increased 76
• Wages grew by 33
• Productivity increased, production costs
  decreased
• Result was rampant materialism
• People spent money on consumer
• goods, recreation and travel,
• professional sports

4
The Roaring 20s

• entertainment movies, dance, touring, radio
• Prohibition speakeasies, bootlegged liquor
• Women liberated bobbed hair, short flapper
  dresses, right to vote (1920)
• Jazz Age

5
Effects of WWI

• 1914-1945 (including aftermath of WWI)
• Rural Americans (especially soldiers) experienced
  urban and European life
• Optimism changed to disillusionment after war
• Civilization was a vast edifice of sham, and the
  war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest
  and most ultimate expression. (John Dos Passos)
• Bohemians and Expatriates
• Chicago, New York (Greenwich Village), and Paris
  (West Bank)

6
The Disillusionment of the Lost Generation

• They saw the breakdown of traditional values and
  emergence of a godless world view
• Freud, Darwin, Marx
• Marked by rebellion and anger of younger
  generation regarding war
• Fostered loss of familiar family life,
  community, religion, patriotism
• Western civilization symbolized as bleak desert
  in desperate need of rain (spiritual renewal)
• This is the rise of Modernism

7
What is Modernism?

• A disillusionment with old a search for the new.
• Modernism encompasses the works of thinkers who
  rebelled against nineteenth century society,
  believing the "traditional" forms of art,
  architecture, literature, religious faith, social
  organization, and daily life were becoming
  outdated.
• Modernists directly confronted the new economic,
  social and political conditions of an emerging
  fully industrialized world.

8
Modernist Literature

• Expatriates in
• London
• Ezra Pound
• T. S. Eliot The Waste Land
• Paris
• Gertrude Stein Known mainly because of her
  influence on other expatriates
• Said to Hemingway All of you young people who
  served in the war, you are the lost generation.
• Ernest Hemingway Believer in cult of
  experience
• Style clean, simple, devoid of unnecessary words
  
• (short sentences)
• The Sun Also Rises
• A Farewell to Arms
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Old Man and the Sea
• F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

9
Modernism in the Fine Art World

• Post-impressionists
• Expressionists
• Primitives
• Cubists